Obama: The world’s always been messy, but now social media is amplifying it

posted at 7:43 pm on August 29, 2014 by Mary Katharine Ham

The No. 1 priority in electing someone after President Obama should be finding someone who does not believe the world conforms to his worldview simply because he says it does. It’s a very dangerous state of mind. Speaking at a $15K-a-plate DCCC fund raiser tonight, natch, CBS correspondent Mark Knoller quoted Obama:

Pres Obama said “The world’s always been messy … we’re just noticing now in part because of social media."

“Second reason people are feeling anxious is that if you watch the nightly news, it feels like the world is falling apart. (Laughter.) Now, let me say this: We are living through some extraordinarily challenging times. A lot of it has to do with changes that are taking place in the Middle East in which an old order that had been in place for 50 years, 60 years, 100 years was unsustainable, and was going to break up at some point. And now, what we are seeing is the old order not working, but the new order not being born yet — and it is a rocky road through that process, and a dangerous time through that process.

“So we’ve seen the barbarity of an organization like ISIL that is building off what happened with al Qaeda and 9/11 — an extension of that same mentality that doesn’t reflect Islam, but rather just reflects savagery, and extremism, and intolerance. We’ve seen divisions within the Muslim community between the Shia and Sunni. We continue to see an unwillingness to acknowledge the right of Israel to exist and its ability to defend itself. And we have seen, frankly, in this region, economies that don’t work. So you’ve got tons of young people who see no prospect and no hope for the future and are attracted to some of these ideologies.

“All of that makes things pretty frightening. And then, you turn your eyes to Europe and you see the President of Russia making a decision to look backwards instead of forward, and encroaching on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of their neighbors, and reasserting the notion that might means right. And I can see why a lot of folks are troubled.

“But — and here’s the main message I have for you — the truth of the matter is, is that American military superiority has never been greater compared to other countries. Our men and women in uniform are more effective, better trained, better equipped than they have ever been. We have, since 9/11, built up the capacity to defend ourselves from terrorist attacks. It doesn’t mean the threat isn’t there and we can’t be — we don’t have to be vigilant, but it means that we are much less vulnerable than we were 10 or 12 or 15 years ago.

“And the truth of the matter is, is that the world has always been messy. In part, we’re just noticing now because of social media and our capacity to see in intimate detail the hardships that people are going through. The good news is that American leadership has never been more necessary, and there’s really no competition out there for the ideas and the values that can create the sort of order that we need in this world.”

The idea that America’s foes and rivals are not merely morally but chronologically deficient, confused time travelers who need to turn their DeLorean around, has long been a staple of this administration’s rhetoric. Vladimir Putin, Bashar al-Assad and tyrants in general have been condemned, in varying contexts, for being on the dreaded “wrong side of history.” Earlier this year, John Kerry dismissed Putin’s Crimea adventure in the same language Obama used last week: “19th-century behavior in the 21st century,” foredoomed by its own anachronism.

These tropes contain a lot of foolishness. Where ISIS is concerned, though, they also include a small but crucial grain of truth.

The foolishness starts with the fact that the history of liberal democracy is actually inseparable, as Abram Shulsky writes in The American Interest, from “the constant appearance of counter-ideologies that have arisen in reaction against it.” Whether reactionary or utopian, secular or religious, these counter-ideologies are as modern, in their way, as the Emancipation Proclamation or the United Nations Charter. Both illiberal nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism are younger than the United States. They aren’t just throwbacks or relics; they’re counterforces that liberal modernity seems to inevitably conjure up.

So writing off the West’s challengers as purely atavistic is a good way to misunderstand them — and to miss the persistent features of human nature that they exploit, appeal to and reward.

Pretending these forces don’t exist or saying they’re going to lose does not actually make that happen, but I am fairly certain it’s accurate to say the President of the United States prefers to pretend it does.

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“And the truth of the matter is, is that the world has always been messy. In part, we’re just noticing now because of social media and our capacity to see in intimate detail the hardships that people are going through. The good news is that American leadership has never been more necessary, and there’s really no competition out there for the ideas and the values that can create the sort of order that we need in this world.”

The most tragic part is to realize how quickly gay marriage, student loan forgiveness, and the War On Womenses will be forgotten when ball bearings and nails are ripping through a crowd at a marathon (again – thanks Obama) or maybe in an American mall after a member of al Qaeda sorry, ISIS, wait, ISIL, yells “NOTHING TO SEE HERE!”

I bet Obama can get two or three fundraisers out of it to tell people how it’s the (R)s fault, too.

No kidding. I figured that out in 5th grade. We actually had history teachers that made us read.

And I sneaked into my parent’s library and devoured all the books they had about WW1 and WW11 went they weren’t watching – because I wanted to know. They didn’t want me to read this history at my age, but I did it anyway.

The internet and the free flow of knowledge may make “leaders” more accountable, but it doesn’t make the world a “messier” place.

It just makes a lazy potus’ job more challenging. And he is embarrassingly lazy and stupid. He’s a lump of pig $shiite as one of my relatives say.

“So we’ve seen the barbarity of an organization like ISIL that is building off what happened with al Qaeda and 9/11 — an extension of that same mentality that doesn’t reflect Islam, but rather just reflects savagery, and extremism, and intolerance. We’ve seen divisions within the Muslim community between the Shia and Sunni. We continue to see an unwillingness to acknowledge the right of Israel to exist and its ability to defend itself.“

Jesus, what a limp-wristed namby-pamby. It’s not a mentality that “just reflects savagery, and extremism, and intolerance,” it’s a barbaric, throwback lifestyle that also projects unbridled hatred, bigotry, misogyny, and sadism.

An “unwillingness to acknowledge the right of Israel to exist and its ability to defend itself”? THEY WANT ISRAEL VIOLENTLY ANNIHILATED, YOU FOOL. Damn, I know he’s speaking to a bunch of leftists, but come on…

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Holy balls … I forgot the most important difference :
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Information disseminated by “social media” can’t be controlled or FILTERED by the liberal propaganda machine, INCLUDING GEORGE SOROS.
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That’s what REALLY aggravates them.

Jesus, what a limp-wristed namby-pamby. It’s not a mentality that “just reflects savagery, and extremism, and intolerance,” it’s a barbaric, throwback lifestyle that also projects unbridled hatred, bigotry, misogyny, and sadism.

An “unwillingness to acknowledge the right of Israel to exist and its ability to defend itself”? THEY WANT ISRAEL VIOLENTLY ANNIHILATED, YOU FOOL. Damn, I know he’s speaking to a bunch of leftists, but come on…

So we’ve seen the barbarity of an organization like ISIL that is building off what happened with al Qaeda and 9/11 — an extension of that same mentality that doesn’t reflect Islam, but rather just reflects savagery, and extremism, and intolerance.

And yet savage man has always been but one decision away… the decision to no longer be civilized.

Yet by invoking savagery he must, at the same time, admit that he must address it directly… and does not do so.

Cowardice in the face of savagery.

Appeasement to tyrants.

Hatred of civilization at home.

He cannot do the job he volunteered for and blames anyone and anything else for his failures.

Earlier this year, John Kerry dismissed Putin’s Crimea adventure in the same language Obama used last week: “19th-century behavior in the 21st century,” foredoomed by its own anachronism.

If a 19th-century Russian czar had invaded Ukraine, Americans wouldn’t have found out about it for months. Now that we have wonderful rapid communication like television and smart phones and tweets and twerks, we find out in a few seconds, but it doesn’t matter because Obama doesn’t do anything for months.

Maybe Obama is worried about “social media” because he got a tweet like this:

And now, what we are seeing is the old order not working, but the new order not being born yet — and it is a rocky road through that process, and a dangerous time through that process.

In other words what the fascist pig in chief is saying is that ISIL is the new normal and we should just be patient and accept our new sharia goat humping, child molesting, rapist, murdering, thieving scum masters and wait for them to execute us for not doing whatever it is at the moment the perverted pieces of garbage want us to do.

The US Military is so strong that we have too much of it, that is why we have to reduce the number of active duty officers, and why we have chosen to sequester funding for our overwhelming military force.

We simply have too much and can afford to reduce the size and cost of our military and our weapons systems. No one can stand against us anywhere.

Syria is of no interest to us.
Ukraine is a local political issue that is none of our business.
Iraq is mostly peaceful and it’s up to the good citizens of Iraq to solve their own problems.

The territorial questions between China and Japan are minor questions over jurisdiction.

Ebola in Africa, Boko Haram, and other inconsequential militant forces like in Yemen are not our problem.

It’s a good thing that back when I was a kid in grade school practicing all that duck and cover underneath my school desk for a potential atomic bomb blast, that we didn’t have social media or there might have been a call for some concern.

The No. 1 priority in electing someone after President Obama should be finding someone who does not believe the world conforms to his worldview simply because he says it does. a way to make it painful to vote for an unqualified incompetent narcissist simply because the media tells you to.

A lot of it has to do with changes that are taking place in the Middle East in which an old order that had been in place for 50 years, 60 years, 100 years was unsustainable, and was going to break up at some point.

This guy always gives himself the best of it, doesn’t he? See, the current regional warfare and the nearly inconceivable brutality of the Islamic State was inevitable. He had absolutely nothing to do with the chaos in Libya, the turmoil in Egypt, or the collapse of Iraq and the rise of the Islamic State

“So we’ve seen the barbarity of an organization like ISIL that is building off what happened with al Qaeda and 9/11 — an extension of that same mentality that doesn’t reflect Islam, but rather just reflects savagery, and extremism, and intolerance.

BS. What part of “Islamic State” does this jackass not understand? Are we to believe he is totally ignorant of Islam’s centuries of violence against the rest of the world?

Both illiberal nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism are younger than the United States. They aren’t just throwbacks or relics; they’re counterforces that liberal modernity seems to inevitably conjure up.

Here is another example of the absolute refusal of some people to recognize the reality of Islam. Apparently doing so would compromise deeply held beliefs regarding moral and cultural equivalency that are seriously at odds with the reality. Islamic “fundamentalism” is nothing more than the historic reality of Islam: Fourteen centuries of bloody warfare and atrocities against the rest of the world.

This is why the Socialists want all television programming to be basically C-Span with themselves talking 24-7 about social equality, wealth redistribution, and how much white people suck.

And why they want all radio to be just like NPR’s All Things Considered.

Then you’ll have to get a license (which won’t be easy to get-will have to get through both IRS and Homeland Security screenings before even hitting the FCC’s desk prior to final approval by the DNC) to write anything on the internet other than meaningless, socially conscious drivel.

Around this time they’ll be rolling out the music making machines for Prole mass consumption. It’ll be like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie never died.

Both illiberal nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism are younger than the United States

Ross Douhat could not be more wrong. Islamic fundamentalism with all of its atrocities goes back to Mohammed.

onlineanalyst on August 29, 2014 at 8:41 PM

You beat me to it. Ross Douchebag wants to pretend that islam hasn’t been around, doing what it does, for 1300 years or so. Sorry, but MKH loses 15 points for even reading Douchebag, let alone quoting him as if he means something.

How come Obama’s socialism is never “on the wrong side of history”? After over a century of uninterrupted failure and catastrophe, it’s still fresh, new, and the hope of the future as far as Barry and his base is concerned.

And we have seen, frankly, in this region, economies that don’t work. So you’ve got tons of young people who see no prospect and no hope for the future and are attracted to some of these ideologies.

This is the same type of bull$hit Obama was saying in the days after 9/11 — before the nation learned the identity of the hijackers. Oh, these poor people, the only reason they become terrorists and do these horrible things is because they’re so economically disadvantaged and they don’t have access to education.

The 9/11 hijackers were mainly Saudis, they were middle and upper class, and they were well educated — some even had graduate degrees they’d received in U.S. schools. They didn’t become terrorists because they were underprivileged or ignorant; they became terrorists because Islam promised them eternal glory and 72 virgins if they’d murder “infidels” (i.e., non-Muslims).

The Daily Mail had an article the other day about the background of the ISIS terrorist who cut off the American journalist Foley’s head. He’s the son of a multi-millionaire, and grew up in London in the lap of luxury.

Yet despite the abundant evidence that it is neither poverty nor ignorance that motivates Islamofascist terrorism, Obama either cannot, or will not, acknowledge the truth about the people who have vowed to slaughter more Americans and raise the black flag of radical Islam over the White House.

It is not Muslim ignorance that Americans need to worry about; it is Obama’s ignorance.

The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precarious thing, whose delicate complex of order and liberty, culture and peace may at any time be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.

“The Story of Civilization” by Ariel and Will Durant [Volume 1, Chapter 16]

One only needs to read the history of islamic conquest and pillaging of India, and the relentless, brutal inhumanity inflicted on the Indian civilization, to understand that ISIS is not merely a modern evolution of islam in response to Western liberal society, but an innate, inseperable component of islam blooming forth in the “Arab spring”.
Obamas failed and feckless ME policies have unleashed forces that he is unable to understand, and is incapable of addressing. Obama is the very one that he accuses others of being; ignorant, intolerant, intellectually inhibited, narcissistic, and dishonest.
This is a period in history when genuine leadership could steer the world through turmoil with minimal consequence. With the current empty tan suit in the White House, it is not unrealistic to believe that the worst can happen.

And the truth of the matter is, is that the world has always been messy. In part, we’re just noticing now because of social media and our capacity to see in intimate detail the hardships that people are going through.

Well, I guess that social media thing is on you and your government love, buddy. After all, according to you, Twitter and Facebook didn’t build that.

And the truth of the matter is, is that the world has always been messy. In part, we’re just noticing now because of social media and our capacity to see in intimate detail the hardships that people are going through.

It is not Muslim ignorance that Americans need to worry about; it is Obama’s ignorance.

AZCoyote on August 29, 2014 at 9:12 PM

More exactly, his delusional belief in the inherent goodness of “Eastern mysticism”, and the inherent evil of “Western materialism”.

It’s a common fault of the Left, born of the Sixties and Seventies, the Beatles, the Maharishi, ashrams on Big Sur, and lots and lots of very heavy drugs. It starts as a romanticizing of all things “mystical” and “enlightened”, and ends with a soul-burning hatred of reality and a mania for the erasure of same.

“Starting From Zero” was the catchphrase they nicked from the Modern architects of the Thirties, but their definition of “zero” is even more “zero” than Mies, Gropius, and Le Corbusier had in mind. They wanted to rebuild after the bombing; this lot wants to bomb and forget about rebuilding. (See the reprehensible History Channel series Life After People.)

It’s not that The One doesn’t understand ISIS. It’s that he simply refuses to believe that they are not the minions of enlightened gurus. And that they do not recognize him as such.

And what really bothers him is that we now know what his definition of Utopia is. And he can’t believe that we don’t want to be the peasants living in mud huts while he and his cronies live in the castle, and have one or more of us chosen at random to be tortured to death at dinner for their edification.

“So we’ve seen the barbarity of an organization like ISIL that is building off what happened with al Qaeda and 9/11 — an extension of that same mentality that doesn’t reflect Islam, but rather just reflects savagery, and extremism, and intolerance

And ISIS has now taken over the better part of two countries in a short period of time! Might it be appropriate to take some action? At least develop a plan?

Do we need to remind Obama that under Sharia law, he should be executed for apostasy as his father was Muslim and he should be also, yet professes to be a Christian?

A lot of it has to do with changes that are taking place in the Middle East in which an old order that had been in place for 50 years, 60 years, 100 years was unsustainable, and was going to break up at some point. And now, what we are seeing is the old order not working, but the new order not being born yet — and it is a rocky road through that process, and a dangerous time through that process.

this site is doing some bikram yoga stretches to find ways to attack our President

for shame

nonpartisan on August 29, 2014 at 9:50 PM

Who needs to “find ways” to highlight examples of our Pres…ent Dictator’s total incompetence and disregard for our country?! He gives daily examples out freely. …Well, maybe not “freely” …heavily taxed.